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Bane
Skills Bane has many skill sets, and is rightly regarded as one of the most fearsome foes the Batman has ever had to face. His time in Pandora has not dimmed these skills, and indeed has in fact allowed him to hone some of them. Bane is, first and foremost, an extremely sharp-minded and analytical thinker, and is generally regarded as having genius-level intellect. He is able to speak in and read upwards of twelve languages, including four dead ones, and has some competency in the natural sciences, though not so much that he can fully replicate the drug he is currently addicted to. Bane has also studied the strategic and philosophical works of many great thinkers, and thus is an excellent strategist and planner, though his skill truly lies with guerrilla-style attacks and survivalism in extreme circumstances. These mental traits are aided by a memory that Bane has trained to the point of it almost being eidetic, and an innate knowledge of body language that allows him to discertain a person's mood and even, if he is extremely observant, their true personality should they be acting. It was through this, after all, that he discovered the true identity of Batman. Physically, Bane is a terrifying specimen, and is quite reasonably feared by most people who are unlucky enough to earn his attention. He is tall and extremely broad, and is covered in slabs of huge, powerful musculature. As a result, he is tremendously strong, able to bench-press 600lbs as a maximum weight, and due to a life of near-constant hardship and suffering is somewhat inured to physical pain. His reserves of willpower are tremendous, and it would take an incredible amount of punishment for Bane to finally break and give in; indeed, some believe that he would die first rather than allow such a circumstance. He is also something of an escapologist, making use of his strength and toughness to break out of most conventional methods of holding someone, sometimes by simply ignoring the pain that escape attempts bring. Furthermore, Bane is a phenomenally skilled and exceptionally dangerous close-quarters fighter. His natural strength added to his knowledge of martial arts and the human body's weakest points make him a terrifying foe to face head-on, an experience not many survive. Finally, Bane is a frequent user of a dangerous meta-steroid compound known simply as "Venom." From a specialised containment device on his arm, he can inject a dose of it directly into his bloodstr eam via four implants located at the base of his skull. The result is intimidating, to say the least; his musculature enlarges further due to overstimulation and his veins turn a sickly shade of green in colour as the compound floods and affects his system, pushing his strength and toughness levels from merely formidable to out-and-out superhuman. In this state, Bane can lift a maximum of two tonnes in weight, and is capable of surviving wounds that would kill him outright in his unaugmented form, though he is not invincible and such wounds will carry drastic effects for him even when under the influence of the chemical. Unfortunately, the Venom comes with a drastic side effect - it is highly addictive. Withdrawal symptoms are severe at their very gentlest, and include vomiting, nausea, constant migraines, hallucinations, shivering, occasional fits and in the worst cases permanent insanity or even death due to massive organ failure. Bane is effectively shackled to his drug, and due to the level of exposure he has been subjected to cannot attempt to abandon it without a high risk of death. Personality Bane is, in four words, quiet, ruthless, brutal and determined to survive at all costs. His philosophy is based around his experiences in Pena Duro, ''the island prison in which he was born and grew up, and thus has led him to believe that only by being stronger than all in your path can you survive in the world. He is willing to cripple, frame, rob and murder almost anyone if it suits his goals, and will actively seek to physically and mentally ruin any opponent that might rise to challenge him, in order to maintain his position as top dog - as it were. In short, Bane is a vicious and uncompromising individual and has committed, without hesitating, many horrendous acts in the name of his own continued survival. As an actual person, he is quite retiring, and tends to avoid large, crowded public spaces, naturally preferring the solitude and quietness of his own company. This particular trait stems from years of isolation and solitary confinement in ''Pena Duro, ''and has become ingrained into his behaviour to the point where, disregarding a few notable exceptions, Bane is simply uncaring of whether he has company or not, seeing no intrinsic value in it and therefore unable to give a damn about it. Friends or companions are not something that Bane has ever really had as a result of his past, nor are they something he especially needs; as a result, he is only likely to cultivate a close group of friends, maybe three individuals at the most, in whom he will place some level of trust. This comfort and satisfaction with his own isolation also extends to lovers; Bane is not entirely asexual, but it is true to say that romantic and sexual desire in him is somewhat stunted, almost childlike, due to it both having never really been explored thanks to his upbringing and life in captivity as well as it simply not driving him anywhere near as much as survival does. Add to this the naturally solitary nature discussed previously, and it becomes clear that Bane, in most situations, is far less likely to respond to emotional or sexual stimuli than other men. Despite, as mentioned in the first paragraph, being utterly ruthless and pragmatic when it comes to what would logically benefit him the most, Bane has a curious moral code when it comes to young children, usually up to the age of twelve. His own childhood was a deeply unhappy and cruel experience, and Bane has thus latched upon the notion of harming childhood innocence and happiness as some sort of unbreakable line he will not cross, despite his willingness to do almost anything else; he will never kill or even harm a child, though he may threaten to do so in order to gain some advantage, and in rare circumstances he may even attack those who attempt to harm children in his presence. Appearance Bane is, physically, a hulking brute in pretty much every sense of the phrase. Standing at 6 foot 9 inches in height and weighing well over 350lbs, he is a veritable mountain of a man, though not a clumsy or cumbersome one. His body is powerful, broad and extremely heavily muscled due to years of physical exercise and strain, and his skin is scarred in many p laces where the legacies of old battles can still be seen. His arms are unusually hairy, and almost apelike, though not out of proportion with the rest of his body. Bane has sharp, eagle-like eyes that seemingly miss nothing around him, and his face, when it can be seen, is hard and a little emotionless in expression, except perhaps for when he is enraged. His eyes are dark in colour and cold, and his nose is fairly broad and angular. In terms of costume, Bane most often wears a set of military boots and black combat trousers, with a small vest for a top and thick, reinforced fingerless leather gloves, like those of a mixed martial artist. His mask is jet black, with a distinctive white facial area and red eyepiece lenses. His Venom tube snakes from the containment device on his left wrist up his arm and into the back of this mask via four ports, and is a rather ugly shade of green in colour. When masquerading as 'Henry Silva,' Bane will wear the sort of clothes one might expect to see on a former South American gang member, complete with small hat to hide the Venom ports in his skull. When under the influence of Venom, Bane's frame grows even more massive, his height increasing to 7ft 2in and his muscles expanding a little, to the point where they are just short of looking hideously overexpanded. His veins pop out and turn a sickly green, and his eyes metamorphose from dark brown to a vivid, unnatural emerald colour. His face is also often almost unwillingly twisted into a snarl due to the increased aggression levels that come with useage of the drug. Relationships Bane has connected with remarkably few people since coming to Pandora. However, he has formed an odd tutorlike relationship with Mindy Macready, perhaps due to her own ruthless nature reminding her of himself at that age, and has also been seen counselling the 'orphan' known as Crona in his cover identity of the reformed cartel member, Henry Silva. History Born in ''Pena Duro, an island prison off the coast of Santa Prisca, Bane has only ever known a life of imprisonment and violence. His father, an unknown rebel hired by Santa Priscan communist revolutionaries to help win them battles, eventually earned the ire of the incumbent Junta, and when he could not be found his sentence was passed down to his unborn child in accordance with the archaic laws of that land. That child had one chance and one chance only; if it were born female, it would not have to serve the sentence. It was a boy, however. Thus it was that the child was born into a living hell, into one of the worst prisons on the face of the Earth, and deprived even of a mother, as she died of illness and heartbreak at her circumstances a mere five years after his birth. Upon that day, at the age of seven, the nameless child was tossed into the general population of the prison, where the guards and warden alike fully expected him to die. Indeed, he almost did; falling from a gantryway almost twenty feet from the ground, the child was in a coma for thirty-one days. After that, his entire behaviour and attitudes changed. The child was gone; Bane had been born. In such an environment, only the strong survive, and Bane set out to become the strongest he could, knowing full well that to fail was to die. Developing a fitness regime that turned his body into a weapon as well as having books on every subject smuggled in so that he could grow mentally as well as physically, Bane also learned how to fight from various inmates, eventually developing his own, very destructive, style of combat. He also gained a classical education from one of the political prisoners, using his fearsome intellect to absorb as much information as he could, Soon, as a young man, Bane rose to dominance in the prison, feared by the inmates and the guards alike for both his cunning and his ferocity when challenged. After a prison riot in which Bane, frustrated at his confinement, killed thirty men with his bare hands, the warden decided that this particular animal was fit only for a solitary cage, and locked him away in the darkest hole he could find. Eventually, Bane came to the attention of the authorities, who forced him into an experiment, an experiment that had killed all the other test subjects. Implanting him with the Venom device and using it to test the meta-steroid, they found that it worked beyond their wildest dreams. Surviving it's effects, Bane used it to escape Santa Prisca and made his way to Gotham, though not before killing the scientists who had worked on Venom, and taking their research notes for himself so as to make more of it. Once in Gotham, he waged open war on Batman for months, wearing him down by releasing Arkham's inmates in one huge breakout, before finally confronting Bruce Wayne (whose identity he had deduced) in his own home and breaking his spine, putting him out of action for the best part of two years and thus becoming the only person in history to have ever overcome and beaten the Batman. Eventually, having made a miraculous recovery, Batman returned to form, claiming his cowl back from an unworthy successor and eventually beating Bane, sending him to Blackgate only for the criminal to escape many months later. In those months, Bane had become obsessed with learning the true name of his father. There were four options for him to choose from; an American doctor, an English mercenary, a Santa Priscan communist leader and a Swiss banker. In his searches, he learned that at least two of these men were dead; the American and the Santa Priscan. However, before he could leave to search for the Swiss man, Pandora decided that he would be amusing enough to serve as a more permanent plaything. As he prepared to leave Santa Prisca for Rome, the vines struck and dragged him into a new world... Pandora History In his initial months in Pandora, Bane's sense of unease at this new world coupled with a dwindling supply of Venom pushed him dangerously close to withdrawal; in order to initially survive, he broke into the Pandora General Hospital with the intent of securing opiates that would generate a similar chemical effect to Venom in terms of relieving the symptoms of his lack of it. There he encountered Dr. Leonard McCoy, who provided him with the painkilllers Bane required to remain stable. Soon after, desperate once more, Bane found unexpected salvation; Poison Ivy, a familiar face from Gotham, offered to create for him plants that produced a pure form of Venom in return for services as and when she felt like not getting her hands dirty. Realising he had little choice but to accept, Bane agreed to the deal. This ironically turned out well for him, as Ivy's disappearance - though nothing to do with him - essentially secured for him a permanent supply of Venom from a long-abandoned warehouse in the seedier parts of the commercial district. Eventually encountering Mindy Macready, Bane inadvertantly saved the girl from a series of rather unfortunate muggers, none of whom survived the experience. Since then, he tutored her both physically and mentally, the pair developing a surprisingly strong if quiet and mutually respectful friendship over time, Bane also encountered Sebastian Shaw, this time in different circumstances; Bane's Venom supplies were being siphoned from and sold to various street gangs as a performance drug, something the mercenary was not willing to allow. Running into Shaw as he attacked a group of Venom dealers, Bane warily left the mutant on something of a truce; neither truly saw the use in attacking the other, and both had business that brooked no interference. Most recently, Bane has taken on the identity of Henry Silva, a supposed reformed criminal, former Cartel member and now professional councillor, and has taken a job at the orphanage in order to both provide something of a cover identity for himself and a small means of income. There, he met Crona, a young and deeply troubled child, who he attempted to help through his confusion and outright terror at being dragged into an entirely new world. Slowly, but surely, Crona is responding to the kindness being shown to them, and with some luck Bane hopes to not only cure a child of terror but also to redeem himself of some of his more henious acts.